


Chop Chop

by FroldGapp



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Keith whump, SHEITH - Freeform, Shiro (Voltron) Whump, if ya looking, shiro whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-03 21:56:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12155580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FroldGapp/pseuds/FroldGapp
Summary: Keith and Shiro must escape from a collapsing planet before it swallows them both.***‘Keith…’ He uses his right hand to lightly bat Keith’s cheek. ‘Look at me.’He does.‘Patience…’ He can’t finish, but he knows he doesn’t have to.





	Chop Chop

‘It’s strange,’ Keith says. His breathing is heavy over his helmet’s mic. Not surprising. He and Shiro have just scaled an unforgiving cliff face, and both of them now stand panting on a broad plateau dotted with rocky pillars. Their armour has scarcely felt more bulky as they both struggled to find handholds, their feet uncharacteristically clumsy. They’d ended up giddy with exertion, laughing uncontrollably and begging each other to _stop!_ even as grit rained down beneath them. ‘Isn’t it weird?’ Keith continues, hands planted on his hips.

‘What’s that?’ Shiro asks. So much of Keith is unfinished thoughts; stranded hypotheses. His mind – Shiro knows – rockets at a million miles a minute.

‘Being on a mission with you. I mean… usually we split up.’

Shiro smiles. He slaps Keith on the back and almost sends him face first into a rocky outcrop. ‘I shot the Sheriff,’ he croons, utterly tone deaf. He looks at Keith who blinks back at him stupidly. ‘It’s a song,’ he tries to explain.

‘Oh...kay…’

‘About a deputy.’

Keith shrugs. 'Great?'

'And his second-in-command.'

‘Ha.’ Keith is a terrible liar. His forced laugh sounds like an unwanted fart in an elevator.

Shiro pulls a breath through his nose. ‘Okay, so you’re the deputy. That’s why we split up.’ Nothing. Shiro sighs. ‘Nevermind. We’re against the clock here. Let’s find the ore Coran needs and be back in the castle before this whole world eats itself.’

Keith nods, clearly still chewing over sheriffs and deputies and why Shiro suddenly burst into song. ‘I still don’t know why we couldn’t fly Red up here instead of climbing.’ He kicks a rock which pings against one of the stone pillars and immediately releases a gush of steaming green liquid.

‘This planet is too volatile for anything too heavy. That shelf Allura indicated will be stable enough for Red though.’ He smiled, seeing Keith worry his lip. ‘She’ll be fine. She’s a giant alloy space cat, we’re miniscule amalgams of soft flesh and horribly fragile bones. I mean, apart from...’ He raises his right arm.

Keith’s face darkens behind his visor. ‘Did anyone ever tell you you have a horrible sense of humour?’

Shiro laughs loudly. ‘You! Everyday, Keith.’

The red paladin is not amused. He storms off towards their mark. ‘Let just get this over and done with.’

‘Okay, okay,’ Shiro chuckles, bounding lightly after Keith using his jetpack. He keeps humming ‘I shot the Sheriff’ regardless.

***

‘Shiro!’

It’s a scream. Somewhere beyond the warm, wet darkness, Keith is screaming his name. ‘Keith,’ he tries – and mostly fails – to say. He coughs instead. His body is a church of pain.

Suddenly his eyes are open and Keith is above him. His helmet is cracked at the front and back across his crown. His cheeks are already blistering where the visor has shattered. His nose is a bloody mess, certainly broken. Shiro’s helmet is nowhere to be seen. His lips are parchment and his eyes sting with sweat and horrid atmosphere.

‘Shiro,’ Keith whispers, urgent. His hands grab either side of Shiro’s face, thumbs running over his scar, his cheek, his ears, his temples. ‘Shiro, say something.’

‘Ou- ouch,’ Shiro manages. His head falls to the left, where the furnace of pain is broiling. And oh.

His arm.

An enormous sheaf of stratified rock has fallen and trapped his left arm. The hand itself he can’t feel, but the junction where his arm disappears under the red-brown rock is unbearable. Even with bleary eyes, Shiro can she the cracked and splintered armour. Inky green lava bubbles up from the rock's base, smoking against his greaves and sabatons. _God bless Altean technology,_ he thinks vacantly. _Acid repellent, but vulnerable to enormous space rocks._

‘What happened?’ he chokes.

Keith shakes his head and blood flies. ‘The crystal. The second we took it the surface…’ He swallows. ‘We have to go. We have to- The whole planet... Shrio, Shiro we have to go and- This gas, the comms… Shiro- ’ He struggles for air. As he bites down another hardwon breath, Shiro realises he’s panicking.

‘Keith…’ He uses his right hand to lightly bat Keith’s cheek. ‘Look at me.’

He does.

‘Patience…’ He can’t finish, but he knows he doesn’t have to.

Keith stands and activates his sword. He stumbles towards the rock and with every step foul gas hisses free of the dusty surface. He looks back at Shiro once before shoving his sword beneath the rock and levering with all his might.

***

Red hovers above them, frantic and helpless. Landing here would commit her paladin to instant and total obliteration. She knows this and so all she can do is wait and hope.

Another deafening explosion shakes the ground around them. Keith’s ears are bleeding now. Shiro's own ears and neck are wet with blood. If they’re not swallowed bodily by the erupting mess of molten rock, they’ll be peeled alive by the air. Keith has remained steadfast, pushing against the awkward hilt of his bayard. He pushes and prises, mostly without any gain. A flake of rock brakes off. He screams in frustration and pulls his ruined helmet free, tossing it into a gaping crater several feet away.

Great geysers have begun spitting forth the planet’s innards. It’s only a matter of time. They have to get to Red. _Keith_ has to get to Red. But Shiro knows him too well; he’ll never leave him. He asks anyway, knowing it’s cursory where Keith is involved. Shiro even tosses in a military order, maybe for old time’s sake. He is ignored and Keith redoubles his efforts, chipping a piece off with so much fury it skitters away and causes a huge explosion.

‘Keith!’ he yells. His voice cracks. ‘Keith!’

The red paladin turns. His eyes are demented. Shiro swallows and chokes on it, coughs and then realises belatedly he’s vomiting. He swallows it down. Keith rushes to him. He’s terrified. Red roars above them.

‘Shiro,’ he says, right on the edge of tears.

Shiro licks his lips and palms Keith’s cheek. ‘Hey, hey.’ He ducks his head, trying to capture Keith’s eyes. His voice trembles terribly when he speaks. ‘As many times as it takes, right?’ Shiro is giggling now, delirious. Keith makes a distraught sound in the back of his throat. Shiro follows Keith’s bowed head with his hand. ‘As many times as it takes, Keith, huh? Right? Keith?’

Keith nods and the first fat tears fall from his eyes. They sizzle on Shiro’s breastplate.

‘Keith. Cut my arm off.’

The red paladin’s eyes meet his own.

‘I need you to do this, Keith.’

He’s shaking his head and moaning, _‘_ _No, no’_ like a mantra.

‘You can save me, Keith. As many times as it takes. You said. You _said._ ’

Another huge explosion rocks the plateau and the world tilts sideways. Keith saves himself from tumbling by grabbing Shiro’s shoulder. ‘No,’ he mouths, his chin is fat and pockmarked with grief.

Red is spitting fire into the sky. She knows her paladin well. His stubborn heart is her stubborn heart and she knows what Keith is capable of doing.

They’re going to die. Shiro bangs his head against the ground and bites back a scream of frustration. Keith will commit them both to death before raising his sword against him. That decides it.

His right arm charges with a deep hum. He makes a fist, opens it again and brings his right arm down in a rapid arc to sever his left.

He’s too slow. Keith, as always, is faster. His sword rings with the impact. It has already cleaved the flesh and bone above his elbow. Blood hisses from the wound in clouds of crimson. There is no answering explosion from the surface and Shiro knows that Keith must barely have glanced it; the perfect, precise swordsman. Keith stands, trembling, as the hot wind whips the hair about his stricken face. His bloodied, grit-stained cheeks are streaked with tears. His eyes don't move from where his sword rest between both pieces of Shiro. It takes a moment for Shiro to draw his eyes away and acknowledge the blistering pain of his truncated arm. He shrieks, inhuman, and can barely register as Keith deactivates his bayard, heaves him up into a fireman’s lift and begins running for the edge of the plateau, jets of steaming death erupting in his wake.

There is only a beat of weightlessness as they tumble from the edge and into Red’s waiting maw.

***

He flexes his new fingers. Same whirring gears. Same glowing interface. A world of difference. One arm taken from him by the Galra, one delivered by Altea.

The past weeks have drifted past like a dream. Red to pod to operating table to pod again. His blistered skin is finally beginning to lose the shimmering quality of scar tissue after his fifth return to the healing pod. He is numb but alive.

He sighs as the door opens behind him. It’s Keith.

‘Hey,’ the red paladin says and drops down on the low bench opposite Shiro. His eyes pointedly avoid the arm. ‘How… is it?’ he asks, troubled and unbearably sad.

‘It’s good,' Shiro says, sounding a liar even to his own ears. 'Keith, what you did saved me. I would have died on that planet. You saved us both.’ He reaches out to grab Keith’s shoulder and it’s only then he realises, with a quiet horror, how fundamentally his life has changed. Cold, synthetic touches. An eternity of unfeeling, ungiving hands. No love lines, no cautious, careful fingers, and no thumb pads to press against laughing cheeks. He bites back the cry that threatens to explode from him. His fingers curl around the yielding flesh of Keith's shoulder. 'You saved us both,' he says and somehow finds the strength to smile.

Keith nods, unconvinced, but leans into the touch all the same.

**Author's Note:**

> Let's party together on tumblr https://froldgapp.tumblr.com
> 
> For blackpaladindown.tumblr.com :) Whumpity whump!


End file.
